Cuts to insulation scheme will leave homes cold over winter, experts say

Cuts to a scheme for insulation and heatpumps for low-income households will leave homes damp, draughty and unsafe over winter, experts have said.Housing have asked for a one-year extension to the scheme to ensure continuity and prevent small retrofit firms going bust. Companies say funding for solar panels and insulation is already being withdrawn, leaving homes cold and draughty as winter sets in.Rachel Reeves announced in her budget that she would cut £150 a year from the average energy bill, partly financed by axing the £1.3bn energy company obligation (ECO) scheme that helped fund upgrades for homes owned or rented by households earning under £31,000

‘The admin’: why it’s not easy to rename streets called after Prince Andrew

Streets named after Andrew, formerly known as Prince but now plain Mountbatten-Windsor, can be found from Broadstairs to Belfast to Birmingham. Roads, avenues, terraces, lanes, crescents, closes, drives and ways are all afflicted – to the dismay of some residents.In Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, Prince Andrew Way, celebrating Mountbatten-Windsor’s 1986 marriage to Sarah Ferguson, will be purged after Mid and East Antrim council passed a motion, described by one councillor as “sad but necessary”, to rename. A public consultation is under way.In Maidenhead, Berkshire, there is a double whammy of Prince Andrew Road adjoining Prince Andrew Close, where some residents have complained of “surface-level embarrassment” , “smirks” and “raised eyebrows” whenever they give their address

Brain damage, blindness and death: the global trail of trauma left by methanol-laced alcohol

For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down – she wasn’t detecting a strong vodka flavour through the veil of Sprite she had mixed it with.All in all, Clarke remembers drinking about five of those shots, sitting with her best friend, Simone White, and a crowd of others at the hostel’s happy hour. CCTV footage shows the group laughing in the warm air of the open bar in the town of Vang Vieng, green and red lights dancing over their shoulders

Londoners told to be vigilant with messages after cyber-attack on council

A London council has urged thousands of residents to be “extra vigilant” when receiving calls, emails or text messages after confirming that data had been taken in a cyber-attack.The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), which has 147,500 residents, said some data had been copied from its systems in an attack this week.The council said it believed the theft related to “historical data” but it was checking whether it contained any personal or financial details of residents, customers or service users.“With advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), we are encouraging all residents, customers and service users to be extra vigilant when called, emailed or sent text messages,” the council said.Three London councils have been affected by cyber-attacks this week, with RBKC and Westminster city council saying a number of systems had been affected across both authorities, including phone lines

The loss of access to and respect for autonomous midwifery is tragic | Letters

I’m an NHS midwife, despairing over your article (Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world, 22 November). My key frustration, though, is how, as with any successful charlatanism, there is truth and real fear being exploited: medical overreach blights lives, women can and should trust their bodies, and a healthy body rarely grows a baby it can’t birth.However, physiology is not a perfected endpoint. Evolution continues with genetic variation spreading through a population by “survival of the fittest”. In the brutal “wild”, the least “well-adapted” (whether by health or circumstance) do not survive

We older people are always a footnote | Brief letters

As one of your older readers, I was looking forward to reading the interesting article on the five epochs of brain development (Brain has five ‘eras’, scientists say – with adult mode not starting until early 30s, 25 November). But why was I not surprised to find the final two epochs given just one sentence between them?Dave HeadeyFaringdon, Oxfordshire I was delighted to find out that the Royal Opera House is replacing its 26-year-old stage curtains. Perhaps the old ones could be reused to make new riser cushions for the stage of Huddersfield town hall. We’re still waiting to be levelled up. (See my Guardian letter, 14 February 2022